August sales numbers in La Plata County made July’s sluggishness look like a banner month. Single-family home sales were 38% fewer YOY, but still +6% in number YTD, because our slow summer was preceded by a warmer and busier-than-usual spring.
The K-shaped economy, which is becoming a hot term for 2026, is one of the more visible features of the current market. The lower- to middle-priced segments of our market are made up of buyers who are pushed out by high home prices, high mortgage rates, and increasing costs of insurance, HOA, and utilities, while buyers in the higher end of the market feel good enough about real estate as an investment that they move forward with buying a home.
Case in point: In-town Durango is thought to be the most expensive place to purchase in the area outside of the resort. What’s incredible is the price of the homes selling outside this area. The single-family median price in rural Durango in August was $1.3M. For ALL of La Plata County, the single-family median price was $855,000. In Bayfield, a less expensive town in the area, there were 0 sales in August. Rural Bayfield’s average price was $1,073,000. 38% of all our residential sales this year were cash purchases.
In the lower- and middle-priced segments of the market, sellers are currently finding, especially in rural areas, buyers harder to find or seemingly impossible to woo. Buyers, thinking harder than ever about the entire package of home maintenance needed, ongoing costs, and price, will not move forward unless they find a home that has a high amount of value. Sellers offer concessions, price reductions, and more to bring in buyers that seem more distant than they have been at any time post-COVID. Whether buyers have a malaise hanging over them about the cost of our market, or if they are merely waiting for Sellers to catch up and see that they are no longer the ones driving the proverbial real estate bus, is yet to be seen.
The median overall and in most individual regions are higher YTD. This is not a reflection of the market as a whole, but rather that the homes being sold are not the homes with deferred maintenance or in need of remodels-they are the homes without ongoing issues and with lots of inherent value to Buyers, as well as the higher-priced segment doing better than the lower segment.
Inventory continues to climb, but La Plata County has 30% fewer single-family homes on the market than pre-COVID. Condo/townhome inventory is back to pre-COVID levels.
The condo and townhome markets had a slower month YOY but are still up 14% YTD, and have a growing supply of inventory, making these markets seem slower than ever to sellers, with a 6-month supply in town and 8 months overall in the county.
Our Purgatory Resort area has an equivalent amount of sales YTD, but inventory has reached 18 months for single-family homes and 15 months for condos, not a great feeling for sellers in the market.
Looking at pending contracts, we won’t hold out hope for a bump in September, as is sometimes the case. Rate increases made that possibility almost impossible. While 2026 shouldn’t end much lower in number or price than 2025, the balance of the market has shifted quite a bit over the year.